Esquina boxeo Blog

Brazil property rights: Tribes and farmers battle to the death

Brazil’s federal and military police forces have not commented on the incident, which witnesses say began with the firing of tear gas but quickly escalated into gunfire. An investigation by the federal prosecutor’s office is underway, but could take years to be completed.

Meanwhile, the often-deadly property rights battles between farm owners and tribes such as the Terena are likely to continue.

After Gabriel was killed, his cousin was shot in the back by unknown assailants, and a chief of the Guarani-Kaiowa, elsewhere in Mato Grosso do Sul state, was killed by pistoleiros while walking to work, according to the Indigenous Missionary Council, or CIMI.

Life hasn’t been easy for Brazil’s indigenous peoples since the Portuguese arrived more than 500 years ago. But the problems have worsened of late, the groups say, as an agricultural boom, led by exports to China, has increased the congressional lobbying power of the ruralista, which represents landowners whose interests often clash with those of the tribes.

Neither demonstrations by sympathetic Brazilians nor denunciations by nongovernmental organizations have done much to defuse the conflict.

When Brazil’s military dictatorship left power in the 1980s, tainted by accusations of genocide targeting indigenous peoples, the new government began demarcating land for the roughly 800,000 tribal members. But the ruralista lobby has often succeeded in blocking property claims and is now challenging the entire system of land distribution to indigenous groups.

President Dilma Rousseff’s political alliance with the ruralistas was among the grievances listed by some of the protesters in the massive demonstrations that recently rocked Brazil. Afterward, in July, she met with indigenous leaders for the first time since taking office in 2011, but said in the meeting that she wouldn’t halt the changes to the process for demarcating land reserves that ruralistas have been pushing for.

“Dilma needed the agricultural industry for her election,” said Tonico Benites, a professor of anthropology and a specialist in indigenous issues at the Federal University of Greater Dourados. “And she needs them now in Congress too.”

The center of Brazil’s farming boom is also the center of violence here in Mato Grosso do Sul, a state that’s home to the country’s largest number of indigenous peoples and whose government is run by ruralistas.

More than 560 indigenous Brazilians have been killed in the last decade, according to CIMI, most of them in Mato Grosso do Sul.

Tribes on legal reserves say farmers don’t respect the boundaries, coming in to deforest and steal resources. Other tribes that have been waiting, in some cases for more than a decade, for lands they believe they were promised by the government have decided to occupy them, resulting in a violent pushback by farmers.

The Terena people on the Buriti farm where Oziel Gabriel was killed say they were told in 2010 that their village would receive an additional 42,000 acres they could farm. When the legal process stalled, they occupied land they considered their ancestral home. In May, the owner of the farm, a well-connected former politician, won a court order to have the residents expelled by force.

The treatment the Terena received isn’t surprising, said Marcelo Christovao, an investigator for the Federal Public Ministry, because the agricultural sector, state government and local media are united against the indigenous peoples.

“Except for CIMI, a part of the Catholic Church, no one around here defends them,” he said.

Christovao, who has been collecting testimony from dozens injured in the Buriti incident, said he had no reason to doubt Marques’ account.

“The authorities and the police completely ignored the protocols for reasserting possession of land,” he said. “They didn’t give warning to either the people or FUNAI [the National Indian Foundation]. They got their orders late one night and showed up here at 6 a.m. the next morning.”